‘Bait’: The greatest movie ever made about Cornwall
To many British folks, Cornwall is the plughole of the UK, a beautiful holiday destination to take a bucket and spade to in the summer, but otherwise, a largely forgotten stick of land that gives the country some decent geometric shape. Yet, to disregard the county is to neglect one of the only places in the UK which seems to have retained some sense of genuine identity, held together by the glue of folklore.
The rife creativity of the county has recently allowed the films of local filmmaker Mark Jenkin to flourish, releasing the feature Bait in 2019, the culmination of decades of acclaimed short film work. Unmistakably Cornish, the film starred the locally known comedian the Kernow King, also known as Edward Rowe, and was immediately distinctive for its monochrome visual identity that made it look like it was recovered battered and bruised from Sennen Beach.
Feeling as though it exists in the same otherworld as the films of David Lynch, Bait tells the story of Martin, a boat-less fisherman who is forced to contend with the fact that his beloved home is being gentrified before his very eyes. While his brother uses his old boat for tourist trips, Martin gets into verbal disputes with the out-of-town family who bought his old house as a seasonal holiday home, and the resentful fisherman tries to figure out where he belongs in this strange new world.
Speaking poignantly about the harm of gentrification, which strips a community of its identity and irreparably changes its structure, Jenkin offers an introduction to the conversation that so many other politicians and filmmakers feel frightened to touch on. Yet, the skill of Jenkins’ film is how he does this while also creating a film that pulses with good humour and a consistently gorgeous cinematic approach.
Using a vintage hand-cranked Bolex camera while making the movie and 16mm monochrome film, which he would later process by his own hand, Jenkin creates a film which fizzes with a hypnotic allure. Just like the organic coasts of Cornwall, which are peppered with driftwood and ancient litter among the golden sands, Bait, too, feels weathered by the storm and the county’s history, bespattered with cuts, sprains and other imperfections.
As if the folklore of the coastal land and its recent troubles with gentrification meet, just for a short moment, Bait becomes a wondrous piece of cinema that speaks directly to Cornish history, past and present.
Take a look at the trailer for Jenkins’ remarkable movie below, which won the Bafta for ‘Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director, or Producer’ back in 2020, below.
